On this blog, I -- John Lofland, jlofland@dcn.org -- report on social life and organization in the Old North area of Davis, California sub specie aeternitatis.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Sept ’15 to Feb ’17 Minutes of the Old North Davis Neighborhood Association (256)

I recently noticed that it has been almost a year since I last received notice of ONDNA minutes published for public view on the internet. Unable to find such internet postings in a concerted search for them, I asked the ONDNA President, Marilyn Underwood, if there were minutes and how I might find them on the internet. She told me that minutes do exist but that they are on a
Google Drive account that has no public URL and that requires that one have a Google
account.

When I expressed my concern that this is not a desirable
arrangement from a transparency and democratic access point of view, she
created a public URL for that Drive, which can be reached at this location:

I greatly appreciate her quick response in attempting to make the ONDNA more open with regard to a record of the organization's actions.Public access aspects aside, it is still not easy to read minutes on that Drive. In the hope of stimulating knowledge of and interest in the ONDNA, I have reformatted
the eight sets appearing there and I post them hereen masse. Enjoy.

The reader will notice that there are no minutes for
several months in the series. I am uncertain why this is and I will work on acquiring
and publishing minutes of the missing meetings.*

1. sept '15

2. june '16

3. july '16

4. aug '16

5. sept '16

6. oct '16

7. nov '16

8. feb '17

_____________________

*I might mention another oddity. The ONDNA
does, in fact, have a public website, but appears to have abandoned it. This is
the URL:

Nothing seems to have been posted on it since
February of 2015, which is more than two years ago.

[Update on May 11, 2017: As of a few days ago, the above URL began to respond that "the authors have deleted this site."]

By my count, this is the fifth website the ONDNA has set
up and abandoned or disbanded. These include a site registered on behalf of the ONDNA but personally owned by a former member and unilaterally taken down and away by that person (oldnorthdavis.org). Another site once owned by this same former member is currently on sale for $2,495, here:

The original website name -- oldnorthdavis.org -- appears to have reverted to the public domain and could be registered by the ONDNA and used as the name of a website if it desired to do so (and someone else does not register it first).